Of the Causes which have made the Irish turn Costermongers.
Notwithstanding the prejudices of the English costers, I am of opinion that the Irishmen and women who have become costermongers, belong to a better class than the Irish labourers. The Irishman may readily adapt himself, in a strange place, to labour, though not to trade; but these costers are—or the majority at least are—poor persevering traders enough.
The most intelligent and prosperous of the street-Irish are those who have “risen”—for so I heard it expressed—“into regular costers.” The untaught Irishmen’s capabilities, as I have before remarked, with all his powers of speech and quickness of apprehension, are far less fitted for “buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest” than for mere physical employment. Hence those who take to street-trading for a living seldom prosper in it, and three-fourths of the street-Irish confine their dealings to such articles as are easy of sale, like apples, nuts, or oranges, for they are rarely masters of purchasing to advantage, and seem to know little about tale or measure, beyond the most familiar quantities. Compared with an acute costermonger, the mere apple-seller is but as the labourer to the artizan.
One of the principal causes why the Irish costermongers have increased so extensively of late years, is to be found in the fact that the labouring classes, (and of them chiefly the class employed in the culture of land,) have been driven over from “the sister Isle” more thickly for the last four or five years than formerly. Several circumstances have conspired to effect this.—First, they were driven over by the famine, when they could not procure, or began to fear that soon they could not procure, food to eat. Secondly, they were forced to take refuge in this country by the evictions, when their landlords had left them no roof to shelter them in their own. (The shifts, the devices, the plans, to which numbers of these poor creatures had recourse, to raise the means of quitting Ireland for England—or for anywhere—will present a very remarkable chapter at some future period.) Thirdly, though the better class of small farmers who have emigrated from Ireland, in hopes of “bettering themselves,” have mostly sought the shores of North America, still some who have reached this country have at last settled into street-sellers. And, fourthly, many who have come over here only for the harvest have been either induced or compelled to stay.
Another main cause is, that the Irish, as labourers, can seldom obtain work all the year through, and thus the ranks of the Irish street-sellers are recruited every winter by the slackness of certain periodic trades in which they are largely employed—such as hodmen, dock-work, excavating, and the like. They are, therefore, driven by want of employment to the winter sale of oranges and nuts. These circumstances have a doubly malefic effect, as the increase of costers accrues in the winter months, and there are consequently the most sellers when there are the fewest buyers.
Moreover, the cessation of work in the construction of railways, compared with the abundance of employment which attracted so many to this country during the railway mania, has been another fertile cause of there being so many Irish in the London streets.
The prevalence of Irish women and children among street-sellers is easily accounted for—they are, as I said before, unable to do anything else to eke out the means of their husbands or parents. A needle is as useless in their fingers as a pen.
Bitterly as many of these people suffer in this country, grievous and often eloquent as are their statements, I met with none who did not manifest repugnance at the suggestion of a return to Ireland. If asked why they objected to return, the response was usually in the form of a question: “Shure thin, sir, and what good could I do there?” Neither can I say that I heard any of these people express any love for their country, though they often spoke with great affection of their friends.
From an Irish costermonger, a middle-aged man, with a physiognomy best known as “Irish,” and dressed in corduroy trousers, with a loose great-coat, far too big for him, buttoned about him, I had the following statement:
“I had a bit o’ land, yer honor, in County Limerick. Well, it wasn’t just a farrum, nor what ye would call a garden here, but my father lived and died on it—glory be to God!—and brought up me and my sister on it. It was about an acre, and the taties was well known to be good. But the sore times came, and the taties was afflicted, and the wife and me—I have no childer—hadn’t a bite nor a sup, but wather to live on, and an igg or two. I filt the famine a-comin’. I saw people a-feedin’ on the wild green things, and as I had not such a bad take, I got Mr. —— (he was the head master’s agent) to give me 28s. for possission in quietness, and I sould some poulthry I had—their iggs was a blessin’ to keep the life in us—I sould them in Limerick for 3s. 3d.—the poor things—four of them. The furnithur’ I sould to the nabors, for somehow about 6s. Its the thruth I’m ay-tellin’ of you, sir, and there’s 2s. owin’ of it still, and will be a perpitual loss. The wife and me walked to Dublin, though we had betther have gone by the ‘long say,’ but I didn’t understand it thin, and we got to Liverpool. Then sorrow’s the taste of worruk could I git, beyant oncte 3s. for two days harrud porthering, that broke my back half in two. I was tould I’d do betther in London, and so, glory be to God! I have—perhaps I have. I knew Mr. ——, he porthers at Covent-garden, and I made him out, and hilped him in any long distance of a job. As I’d been used to farrumin’ I thought it good raison I should be a costermonger, as they call it here. I can read and write too. And some good Christian—the heavens light him to glory when he’s gone!—I don’t know who he was—advanced me 10s.—or he gave it me, so to spake, through Father ——,” (a Roman Catholic priest.) “We earrun what keeps the life in us. I don’t go to markit, but buy of a fair dealin’ man—so I count him—though he’s harrud sometimes. I can’t till how many Irishmen is in the thrade. There’s many has been brought down to it by the famin’ and the changes. I don’t go much among the English street-dalers. They talk like haythens. I never miss mass on a Sunday, and they don’t know what the blissed mass manes. I’m almost glad I have no childer, to see how they’re raired here. Indeed, sir, they’re not raired at all—they run wild. They haven’t the fear of God or the saints. They’d hang a praste—glory be to God! they would.”